Things in particular
by Umbra viridis -tco
Summary: In Castiel's eyes Dean never stopped being the most beautiful thing to be protected at all costs. Dean doesn't care about the price. He's breaking like porcelain because being protected hurts too much. He doesn't need to be saved - he wants to be loved. The need becomes an instinct through which Dean somehow always finds the one that keeps running away.


Dean's own best tested coping mechanisms are malfunctioning and he had found himself at the very edge of his nerves. He used to brush stuff off like dust. On rare occasions when he couldn't do that – he drank, fought or fucked it away. Except that, the world around him is somberly silent these days, as if the great unfathomable fall caused turmoil around monsterland as well. Seems that monsters are doing the same thing he is – they're waiting. With the shit that just transpired, nobody knows what to do. What can you do with Heaven on Earth gone wrong and a headless Hell. It's the silence that is nothing less than the prelude to a great war. So for the time being, there's nothing to kill. Not a single case to bother with lately. There is too much electricity in the air that a single move too bold can break the fragile balance.

Putting obvious reasons aside, it's bad because Dean realizes fighting things away was the last thing that still seemed to do the trick for him for a while now. In Casless situations, he learned the hard way, that the remaining two aren't enough. He tried to drink it out for a year, no less, but it only burnt him more, only came back stronger each time and louder with each glass of whiskey. Drowned, dead, desecrated by Leviathans, Cas never left him – the lack of him remains a painful reminder of the times of his presence. And drinking, most of the time, only made the feeling sharpen instead of turning the pain into a general blur. This time it won't work, either.

Sex had become a dull ordeal. That's a tragedy on its own and Dean didn't want to dwell into it until last night, because last night was the fiasco that forced him to face the insides of his messed up head.

For most of his life, it used to help. For a night he could forget what he is, for a night he could be remembered for something good, he could be loved and he could love back. For a night his hands weren't the ones to kill and break. His hands were the ones to bring remarkable joy, his hands were free to express kindness.

So for a night, he was there for the girls. They had names, they had stories feelings and needs, slutty in his eyes or not, they were, each one of them – a fascinating, unique miracle. He cared for them, he tended to them, made them feel special when they felt they weren't. He loved their eyes, their lips, their breasts, hips, their voices and their dreams. For a night he really loved them and they loved them back. They caressed them, they needed him, he was important. They praised him for being him, they did not shun him for being kind, they did not mock him for melting beneath their touch. He was a boy, and later – a man – with a pretty smile and breathtaking charm, the one of their dreams and what not – he was just him, and it didn't matter, not one bit, if his hands are sharper than knives, how swift he is to kill, how many corpses fell due to the judgment of his guns and blades. It was a beautiful, fleeting thing to have, too feel. To exchange blood for the smell of perfume for a night. It was enough.

And then it wasn't. And then it wasn't required. As if he had found something that filled that void. The pay-per-hour love began to insult him. He could no longer live within the lie. One night stands lost their appeal. They felt repulsing afterwards and the eerie feeling of wrongness would not leave him for days. Porn was pale and boring, he couldn't force himself to get off on any of it anymore. He hadn't had sex for two years now, and the last time he did – it was horrible because it felt akward and it gave him a kid that only got to die in the end. Purgatory made his blood boil with other sort of a need – the one that got fulfilled by the stream, it cleansed him off his own fallacy, gave him hope for yet unnamed, but a new life. But when he got out – the thought died, as if it got left behind. Sex didn't, wouldn't and couldn't give him anything so he didn't bother trying. What he needed was closure, completion, not an illusion of it. So maybe just that one time he accidentally reminded himself of what he needed when he tried all he could to brush that off. Subconsciously it hit him back, he realized later, that it must have been the image of a dark-haired, unshaved man that reminded him what a powerful thing it was to mean something to someone, what a soothing thing it was to be let care about someone back. Reminded him how real those things were. How much he craved them. Dean didn't even want to think about any of this, but his eyes fooled him apparently since he was told there was a moment of eye magic that occurred. He was told that he could be meaningful as a person and for a second there it stunned him speechless. But then he was told that it wasn't true. Next time, he was reminded that he's an exploitable sack of nicely packed meat and it brought him down both to earth and to his knees, again. This is not what he needed. Not since he understood how love really tastes and that those things he admired in the past, were nowhere close. Dean had withdrawn himself from the area of perfume-tainted lies. He wouldn't dare to fuck Cas away.

Well, last night he tried anyway, and he learned the worst way that he really, really, can't. He was so desperate for a moment of a pause inside his burning mind, just that, the only thing he wanted to get. He's been choking on Cas's disappearance and the terrifying rain of all things holy for nights and he's been trying to push it away, not to say the word, not to think the word, not to let in the one and only conclusion what could thousands of burning wings, drowned bodies and unanswered prayers mean, he didn't want to believe, but with each passing day of silence it was louder and louder in his head, and even if he wanted to – he wouldn't know how to cope. He's been choking on anger cause he's reached a moot point with Sam and despite everything he tried, he couldn't make him get better. And days were passing. He broke his own promise and he's been paying secret torture-filled visits to Crowley because if anyone in this world knew how to fix a kid broken by infernal trials, obviously the King of Hell would be the best choice to start with. And, boy, the asshole really did enjoy finally having an opportunity to speak. Except that, despite Dean's excellent skills in retrieving information, Crowley still preferred to focus on mocking out Dean's life, choices and emotional state as well. Dean had stopped counting how many witty remarks on his relationship with Cas and the angelic fall were made so far. He didn't want to listen, but he heard and remembered all of it, either way. And it only added to the fire.

And he really, really had to put the fire down somehow. He thought he was that kind of man who could take everything ugly in and still keep going, it was his one damn thing of pride. He thought he had no limits. He thought there was no bottom to his patience. He was wrong. For the first time he could see the borders of his mind, the fucking final frontier, and he was terrified because he had no idea what's beyond that point. He didn't want to find out. He didn't want to boldly go. Not there, not alone, not now, not yet.

So he drove to the first bar he found and he drank and he drank, hoping to dull his mind before it breaks, and he would try anything he could find. And that girl came up to him, tried to win his attention by some cheesy pickup line he doesn't even remember now, but it didn't matter either way cause he didn't care what she had to say, he just went through the regular notions, hoping that he would at least get a glimpse of oblivion and maybe that would reset him enough to keep going for another while. But he just hates himself right now cause she didn't have a name, there wasn't any color to her eyes, there was nothing about her that made her matter and he's ashamed of himself cause he took her bouncing around his dick with lack of cooperation, lack of interest and lack of dignity and, fuck, it just isn't his modus operandi in bed, is it. On top of that, the only thing he noticed when she turned around were the fallen stars tattooed on her back and, of course, it reminded him painfully right away about the one fucking thing that fell for him and got lost along the way and all he could fucking do was to let out a shameful broken cry and that was the end of it like that, right then. Everything the star reminded him of, ripped through his bones, through his skull and his eyes like a saw. And for a second there, he thought he was bleeding. Turned out he was just crying.

He told her he was sorry. He was. This whole thing that night was never even supposed to happen in the first place. This whole thing that night was a triple insult. Every single thing he did and allowed was an insult to Cas, to her, to himself. He didn't tell her that. He just said he was sorry. She stared back at him and said she believed him. He must have looked sorry. And damn, he was, about everything. He asked her if he could at least take her back to the bar and get her another drink to make up for fucking up her night. She told him he needs that drink way more than she does. But he knew damn right a bar couldn't give him anything he needs. He still doesn't know how to get back what he needs. He know what he needs, he said it at the clearing, he said it in the crypt. Once. Twice. He thought it would be enough.

He kept repeating it drunkenly last night when he tried to make his way back to the bunker by foot and he walked, every step getting him closer to his limits, staring into the dark, starry sky, praying to the one that is no longer there, saying "I need you" over and over again.

* * *

Castiel thinks it is in an odd way an appropriate thing to decide to stay among the lost and homeless, of all places. It describes his position with bitter accuracy. His first home is burning and lost, family shattered by his mistake yet another time, and his second home became once more a unachievable dream. He never thought it would come to this. He believed that he would either die by the hands of his brethren or win and victoriously, in peace, he would finally return to the one place he'd rather be in over Heaven. While his first encounter with the Winchesters' new home was quite a cold and somber one, he has got to admit to himself that he had grown very fond of the place already. Back when in the warm and safe confines of an unknown room Dean would not grace him with a single word, yet with a sternly furious face tended to his wounds which he had been too weak to heal at the time, Castiel had foolishly allowed himself to feel hope that one day he too, would call this place his home. And in that home, he and Dean would speak to each other with fondness again, no anger, no guilt, no remorse to blind them anymore.

But now Castiel knows that he can never return there again and he will be seeing Dean no more for the next years, maybe decades of this mortality limbo that he's stuck in. This is the last thing he was prepared for. This is the thing he is the most worried about becoming human. The most basic notions are hardly an intricacy, at least not anymore since he had learned to take care of them rather quickly. He's seen humans do many things and in this way, they are no mystery. But he realized that he does not know how they work from the inside, from the very core of their minds. And now he is left to the mercy of ten percent capacity of a human brain at most and he is supposed to fit the entirety of his memory, knowledge and experience within three pounds of an organ when he was made as an enormous, burning thing made of information itself. It is impossible to be like this, impossible to keep everything in, keep everything he knew intact when human memory falters and wilts and dies within the span of a single breath. This worries Castiel the most. He needs to keep the most important thing. Since he can't have, he'll at least make sure he won't forget. So Castiel draws. He pours the knowledge from his mind to the hands which still remember how, on a certain august day, they rebuilt the masterpiece piece by piece, tendon after a tendon, a muscle after another – every single detail of it they still achingly remember.

Castiel thinks very fondly of the people he lives among for what he supposes is a few weeks now. The money he acquires by unlawful however very efficient ways, he mostly spends on feeding them and buying them medication, if they need any. But he does not talk to them, not much. He listens to them, though, most of the time when he occupies his hands with recreating the constellations of melanin spots that illuminate the skin or when he recalls the magnificent lines of a pair of lips and a jaw with the rough caresses of his pencils. He answers to the man and women when asked, but when they ask him about the drawings, he never does. "Who is it" is a horrible question, after all, when the word hurts too much to let it be spoken, let it be heard calling by your own voice, but never meant to reach the one who is being called. So Castiel fills the blank sketchbooks in silence, one after another, with variety of studies of arms, palms, eyes, necks or wrinkles, all in different angles, sometimes brimmed with details to the point of insanity, and sometimes just silhouettes with thoughtful and tired faces. He tries to catch and hold everything, he needs to have it close in case one day his human mind betrays him and he'll start forgetting. He can't draw two things, two things he misses the most but cannot in any way, convey through a pencil and a willing hand. It's his voice and how it bends Castiel's thoughts and twists his heart to meet the voice's demands. And it's the touch they shared, how the heat of its significance burned away the air around them when a hand met an arm, when out of nowhere their skins had brushed, it was, everything that happened between their bodies, an unmistakable design, coincidentia oppositorum. And it seemed to work like nothing in history, similarly planned, ever did. His pencil can't help him feel it again, although this is what he wishes to cherish the most, to relive. But the limitations of the body that is now so tragically his are nothing more but an insult to the memory. He misses the heat and he misses the sound. It's cold and silent. His humanity became cold and silent.

It doesn't even matter who tries to buy him – men, women, it's all the same. It's not even close to igniting a spark, nowhere near to the melody of a song of the voice ringing in the back of his head. Nothing more than a dull chain of actions and reactions, just hydraulics, basic laws of human construction. It's nothing. It's not even sex, it's just money. And the people here need it more than he deserves anything. He's sworn to protect people. And he does. That's all he can. All he's got left, everything else that matter he had irretrievably lost.

The only blessing he received with his spectacular fall is the ability to dream. Here, his mind makes him feel astonished when he first awakes for it twists and disarranges the knowledge he so piously tries to keep unscratched. When he dreams the faceless, nameless bodies from the day make place for the one he knows by heart and then a miracle occurs, performed by Dean Winchester's holy, flawless back, writhing with the raw power of a fiery serpent beneath the guidance of his hands. And their bodies align in new order, a perfect fit of skin to skin and Dean envelopes him whole and feeds him with the moisture of his breath, they become a symphony of movements and sounds – adagio, andante, allegro and presto undoes him in blankness and light, once more he is a star and he burns and he shines while Dean melts in his warmth and becomes one with his core. Those are things other people will never do to him. All of it because he remembers what that single arm had once been under his grip.

* * *

They call him Da Vinci. Someone pointed out he's like the artist: a genius that knows so much, far beyond his era, a madman fixated upon the masterpiece. Nobody knows where he came from, he only said as much that he "died" and "now he's here, waiting for the death". And that, obviously is hardly a useful explanation to receive. He's weird, like, out of this world weird, but they like him here. He helps them a lot, he doesn't judge them. He tends to their injuries as good as he possibly can, given the circumstances they're all in. Sometimes he cries and whispers he could have done it faster and better in the past, that he could have saved them all of their pain, but he no longer has a way. So someone had asked him if he's a doctor or something. Said he was a soldier.

"What did he fight for?" They inquired.

"For too much" he just told them and returned to his art.

Most of them know he's a hooker these days. Some laugh and call him "Doctor Sexy" instead. Not to mock him, truth be said, it's rather a warm joke that maybe, just maybe, can cheer him up one day, but he doesn't seem to care either way. He just, sometimes, stare blankly into the sky and after a while, tends to look down somberly. As if he heard something out of the space, but now he can't anymore. There's a gossip that Marissa once saw him do that and then whisper to the mystery muse of his drawings: "If you're praying, I can't hear you." But Marissa is eight and she says things that make no sense more often than not. She's just a kid.

No one knows who the guy from the drawings is, either. Da Vinci always pretends he doesn't even hear the question. So they called him the Mona Lisa. There's just something so painfully real in everything his drawings have, there is this palpable, inexplicable intimate knowledge radiating from the precisions of the details, of how much effort, every single time, he puts into gaining depth out of his model's sad, mysterious eyes. The pencil makes them grey, but they speculate every now and then what their color is. Got to be beautiful, that's for sure. Had to be his lover, that's sure, too. He wouldn't keep drawing his bare back, his chest, the crook of his neck and his mouth so often, if he weren't. His Mona Lisa, though admittedly hot, never looks like porn, even on the most revealing drawings. He's always like a precious gem, like pure sunlight, like the icons of the holy. Everything about them is sacred and pure and Mona Lisa makes them feel humble around his beauty. The man looks very sad most of the times. Like he's older than he should be, like he's burdened. Like a martyr of some sort. Just once old Anais saw a drawing where the man had this tiny, private smile, as if one he was saving especially for the poor artist and she wouldn't leave the guy be. Thing with her is, that she's the boss of all bosses here. She had taken care of their lot first, long before Da Vinci came up. She's like the grandma of all this bullshit and no one ignores her, it's law. Not even the artist.

"Did he die?" She asked.

"I did" he told her.

"Is he looking for you?"

"I hope he isn't. There's too much risk and I need to be away."

"Why? Did he hurt you? Or did you hurt him?"

"He can get hurt with me around. And I no longer can protect him."

"Your sweetheart would choose your companion over the safety. That's what spouses do."

"He's my friend."

"A friend would choose so, too" Anais said. "But your hands and eyes disagree with your words. It's a love lost you try so hard to keep by your side. Your voice speaks of him softly as I spoke of my husband. I got no money in my wallet, dear, but I still have his pictures there. My treasures. He died thirty years ago, and they're still there. And if I had hand like yours, I'd draw him too, baby" she explained. "Your heart married that boy even if you didn't."

People were listening all around. But for a long while, he didn't say a thing.

"Do you still remember his voice?" He just asked.

"I do, honey. Things like that don't go away this easy."

And it was the first and the last time any of them saw their Da Vinci smile.

* * *

Dean eventually broke Crowley enough to get actual information. It was a very lousy substitute for fighting his fears away, but he focused his remaining resources on the task anyway. Again, torture had to be the last damn thing keeping him safe from insanity, and perhaps he should have felt sad about it, but Dean doesn't think he's got it in him to care anymore. What he needs, apparently, is demon blood. This is the only damn thing Dean can still be pissed about because, fuck, it cost so much to take it outta Sam in the first place. And now it seems that having his blood too pure is what is actually killing his brother. He's clearly not gonna let him die. Even if it means getting the damn crap back into his system. They should've known the purity is a lie. There's no such shit as pure. There's just no good things at all. It's as simple as that, he muses bitterly while taking a sip of a coffee in front of a small, shitty-looking Chinese restaurant in some hole in Illinois, where, according to Crowley's words, there should be some idiot, uncooperative black-eyed bitches on the loose which the Crossroad King would see fit to bleed them dry. The day looks like a good one, overall. If there are any good days when the edge of your nerves are constantly brushing at your bones.

This day soon delivers with the last straw that actually makes Dean snap. So he's eyeing the area, sipping his shitty coffee, when out of nowhere, these two hobo looking assholes that were supposedly casually walking on the other side of the road, flipped their motherfucking shit upon seeing him.

"It's him, it's him!" He clearly hears them shouting one to another and just like that, they run off like they're on warp fucking seven.

Well, fuck, Dean thinks, meaning both "probably them demons" and just plain old "fuck" in general and needless to say, he ditches his coffee and runs after them. One of those guys is frantic enough he cuts his hand with some ugly piece of metal while slaloming between some ugly trashcans but he hardly seems bothered by it. After a few minutes he seems them running under a bridge where there's something like a hobo-camp thing seems to be going on and Dean assumes it would be the best to stop for a moment and observe before taking action, so he hides behind a nearby pillar, but the next words he hears them say make the idea drop dead in an instant.

"The Mona Lisa's here!" The guy announces and shocked voices immediately raise among the homeless. "Vinci, you hear me? The dude from your drawings, he found you."

"Dean" He hears his name being brokenly called by the unmistakable one and only voice that keeps haunting him at all times. He hears people repeat his name in some kind of awe. "He said his name" he hears them babble in shock one to another. Dean emerges from his hiding and answers the call.

He sees the Angel in tattered clothes, crouching with a first aid kid next to the guy he just chased. He's trying to fix his cut arm, but his hands are shaking too much and he's doing a very shitty job.

"Cas?" Dean tries and the awestruck people around them repeat the name like an echo. "Cas, I thought you were dead" he says and finally lets the word escape his mouth now that he knows it isn't true.

"I am. I fell. And everything else fell because of me."

"So what?" Dean huffs.

"I had to hide. They want me dead."

"You could have hidden at home" Dean hears himself speak through gritted teeth, one step away from fury. "I fucking mourned you again."

"I'd have to mourn you if I returned" Cas says somberly and finally rises his head to meet Dean's gaze. "They would kill you on my eyes just to make me feel their pain. I want you to live, Dean. Without me."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can."

"Then I won't" Dean cuts. "I'm only gonna say this once" he warns. "I'm not buying your Purgatory I can't go cause they'll hurt you small talk again. I'm going to knock you down unconscious and drag you to the car if I have to. You're staying with me. So you can either walk to the car and ride or wake up tied the fuck up in Kansas, Cas."

"Dean" he tries, voice begging and he stands up, making slow steps towards him.

"No, don't you Dean me" he groans as he paces further in Cas's direction. "You've Deaned me enough, about time you stopped talking and did something."

They're within an arm's length away from each other when Cas raises his hand unsurely and puts it on his arm, the one he branded so damn long ago. Dean watches him exhale with relief and close his eyes upon curling his fingers around the fabric of his shirt.

"Nothing I tried could give me what this gives me" he admits quietly, as if he's ashamed.

"Yeah? What is it?" Dean inquires, strangely calmed by the contact.

"Completion" he hears Cas say and he thinks that it might be it. He remembers a book he used to read to Sammy when they still were kids. He found it in a motel room an even though he'd never say it, he still likes it. It's a good book, he thinks, a wise one.

"You become responsible for what you tamed, Cas. Works both ways" he hears himself say.

Cas's hold tightens in reply. He lifts his other hand and it lingers for a moment above Dean's arm as he exchanges a shy glance with a woman who looks so old she could be Jagger's mom.

"Go home, sweetie bird" she says and Dean thinks, yeah, Cas, do that, but also, lady, excuse you.

Cas's hand falls heavy and possessive on his arm, this time, the grip is firm from the start. Dean doesn't think he's entitled to complain.

"Yeah, sweetie bird, don't just stand there, let's go" he says and tugs at Cas's sleeve, really intending to leave this place now that the holy old lady or whatever the shit she is here had said her big yes and what not. But then a little girl, a real cutie, Dean's gotta say, he even imagines that Cassie could have looked like her as a child, runs up to them, holding something in her scrawny arms.

"Aren't you taking your drawings?" She asks.

"What drawings?" Dean goes, Cas stiffens in panic which makes Dean take the sketchbook before Cas can grab it. He browses through its contents. And it's all him. Partially, him, entirely him, dressed and not. Huh.

"You did me like one of your French girls, huh, Cas" he manages to say.

"I don't remember doing any girls that were French" Cas replies.

"But you remember doing girls?" Dean insists, failing to hide the jealousy in his voice.

"Girls too."

"Wait, hold on, what –"

"But I told you. Nothing did to me what this thing does to me" Cas immediately explains and his fists now are literally clawing at his arms.

Dean swallows hard as he finds himself turned on in so many wrong ways he fails to count. He doesn't remember being that aroused in years, he feels like a teenager again. He feels like Hell never froze down his loins.

If this, as Cas calls it, is a thing, Dean wants to do many, many, fuckload of nights-long particular things to Cas.

But for now, he makes a step and the sweetie bird follows. Follows him till they're in the car, follows him until they're in the bunker. Until they're home. At last.


End file.
